In January the first of 8000 JPMorgan staff will move from the City into that Canary Wharf Tower hurriedly vacated by Lehman Brothers. Next year City workers will see a tower capable of holding 8000 workers rise above the Square Mile. George Iacobescu has shaped both events.

If they erect a statue to the father of Canary Wharf in Canada Square it should be that of the 66-year-old chief executive of the Canary Wharf Group.

The Romanian-born engineer came over from Canada in 1988 as construction boss of a largely empty site. Since 1997 Iacobescu has been boss of London's second City. Today CWG owns 6.4 million square feet of property worth £4.7 billion, collecting rents of £230 million. The 900-strong group manages 97 acres of grounds on the 15million-square-foot estate as well as the underground shopping malls.

The aim is to double the population to 200,000 over 20 years. But plans to extend eastwards by adding seven million square feet at Wood Wharf are in the deep freeze. Iacobescu's 150-strong development team is saving the taxpayer half a billion pounds building a Crossrail station for half the government's estimate. But that, and a mere 20-storey tower for the European Medicines Agency, is not enough to keep the team busy.

That's why Iacobescu has been spreading his wings. A 50:50 joint venture with Land Securities to build the 540-foot Walkie Talkie tower in Fenchurch Street was signed last October. CWG has now re-engineered the project. The complex cladding on the 34-storey tower which swells towards the top has been simplified.

Stairways and doors have been widened to allow the maximum number of occupants of the 685,000-square-foot block to rise from 6500 to 8000. Work is under way. Iacobescu's team will show others how to build efficiently at the Shell Centre project. CWG and the Qataris, who partly own Canary Wharf, won a £300 million bid in July to build more than one million square feet of offices and hundreds of flats on the oil company's South Bank site.

It hasn't all been plain sailing. Canary Wharf went bust in 1992 during a seven-year lean spell ending in 1996. In September 2008 Lehman Brothers were renting one million square feet in a 33-storey tower when it went bust. But when the going gets tough

Two months later, when confidence was at an all-time low, Iacobescu persuaded JPMorgan boss, Jamie Dimon, to spend £237 million buying a plot next door to Lehman Brothers to build a 1.9million-square-foot European HQ. CWG built the foundations. But JPMorgan got cold feet and froze the project.

Er, how about that nice Lehman tower suggested Iacobescu? Yours for £495million. And so 8000 JPMorgan staff will move to Canary Wharf after all. And, just in case, the footings of the stalled HQ are being brought up to ground level. It's called making your own luck.

Caring smartens up Mayfair with a block of 'super-flats' in old American Naval club

Revised plans show the number of flats has been cut from 41 to 31 and the development upped 20% in size. Layouts show a 12,000-square-foot apartment, which agents say will fetch between £60 million and £75 million.

A consortium led by the Ivy owner bought the former US Naval Club in November 2007 for £250 million, using debt provided by the Irish Nationwide Building Society. An application to strip out the 178,000-square-foot block and slot 41 flats into the existing frame was approved by Westminster Council in 2009.

The new plans call for the internal walls and floors to be torn out, allowing 218,000 square feet gross of new space behind the existing eight-storey façade. The new floor plates add roughly 25,000 square feet to the original 132,000 square feet of net sellable space, adding tens of millions to the value of the development.

So will making them bigger, says one Mayfair agent who estimates buyers will pay a 10% premium for super-sized flats of more than 4000 square feet - that's about 10 times the size of a modern one-bed flat. He estimates the 12,000-square-foot top flat will fetch at least £5000 per square foot and could be well north of £6000 per square foot - up to £75 million.

The plans for the £500 million development are to be considered by Westminster Council before Christmas. But Caring's consortium has some financial hurdles to jump before anything beyond the current "soft strip" of Thirties block can begin. Nama in effect controls the site. The Irish "bad bank" now owns the Irish Nationwide loan, because covenants were breached. Property website CoStar says Caring is close to regaining control. His consortium is also said to be close to finalising a £330 million loan with RBS and Deutsche Bank.

That loan will buy out Nama and pay the £100 million construction bill. If all goes well Mayfair will have its first block of super-flats by 2014 with apartments to match those at the Candy Brothers' One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, that so much more vulgar and noisy part of town.

Mirabelle a step ahead of Richard

A second block of super-flats is due to rise above the now-closed Mirabelle restaurant at 56 Curzon Street, five minutes from Grosvenor Square.

Two super-sized units of 10,400 square feet and 9000 square feet are the largest of 18 huge, "lateral apartments" on the corner plot currently housing 35 flats.

David Marks of fund manger Brockton Capital pieced the scheme together in great secrecy over four years. The 21 owners of the 35 flats and the Mirabelle restaurant's landlord had to be bought out before plans drawn up by New York architect, Robert Stern, could be revealed.

The two whopper units will sell for upwards of £50 million, say agents. The 6000-square-foot penthouse will go for £30 million, and several 4700-square-foot apartments are said to be worth £20 million a pop.

The end value of the 88,000 square feet of residential and 32,000 square feet of commercial space will exceed £400 million if the flats sell for £4500 per square foot.

The plans have yet to be formally lodged with Westminster Council. That means the flats are unlikely to be finished for two to three years.